Search form

Search

Transportation

<a href="http://www.mta.info/nyct/index.html&quot; target="_BLANK"><strong>New York City Transit</strong></a>&nbsp;is the life blood of New York City, moving more than&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mta.info/mta/ind-perform/per-nyct.htm&quot; target="_BLANK"><strong>187.9 million</strong></a>&nbsp;passengers per month. However, the Lexington Avenue Subway Line is currently over 150% of capacity. As the City grows we must improve capacity and investigate transportation alternatives. We must find alternative transportation routes for residents of Roosevelt Island by modifying current subway service, trams, ferries, and even building additional subway stations.<br><br>While we are building any improvements, including the long overdue Second Avenue Subway, we must make sure that the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mta.info/&quot; target="_blank"><strong>Metropolitan Transportation Authority</strong></a>&nbsp;(<a href="http://www.mta.info/&quot; target="_blank"><strong>MTA</strong></a>) is&nbsp;<strong>transparent</strong>&nbsp;by making its construction plans available to the people,&nbsp;<strong>open</strong>&nbsp;to review and suggestions from the community, and&nbsp;<strong>accountable</strong>&nbsp;should final decisions be made by the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mta.info/&quot; target="_blank"><strong>MTA</strong></a>&nbsp;without public comment.<br><br>While the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nyc.gov/mayor/&quot; target="_BLANK"><strong>Mayor</strong></a>'s&nbsp;<a href="http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/congestionpricing/index.htm&quot; target="_BLANK"><strong>Congestion Pricing</strong></a>&nbsp;plan may not have been enacted, it is important not to let a greener New York fall by the wayside. As your City Council member I will work with you to implement initiatives that preserve our environment, improve transportation and make New York City a clean, affordable, and accessible place to live.

"Trying to get past 59th used to give me great pause. I didn't know if I was going to make it because, in all honesty, it's a death trap ... not quite so anymore, and I was able to get here with protected bike lanes the whole way," said Ben Kallos, a New York City Councilman.

The city Department of Transportation painted new lanes in June between East 68th and East 59th streets in June including the portion of the avenue that crosses the Queensboro Bridge. The avenue's bike lane now stretches from East 125th Street down to East 43rd Street, DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Ed Pincar announced.

The new lanes have turned an area previously considered a "deathtrap" into a safe passageway for cyclists, local City Councilmember Ben Kallos said Friday.

City Councilman Ben Kallos took to Twitter saying he and his family had to wait for about 40 minutes at the Upper East Side dock for a ferry.

Once the ferry came, the councilman said there wasn’t enough room for everyone in line to get on the boat. That means those people had to wait another 30 minutes for the next ferry.

“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” Kallos said. “Any time the weather is nice out there, people will tell me about the fact that they’ve been left behind. This time it happened to me and my family and I’ll tell you that with a small child, that’s not easy and I really wish I knew ahead of time.”

City Councilman Ben Kallos said he planned to enjoy Sunday’s sunny weather with his family aboard a NYC Ferry boat. He arrived at the ferry system’s East 90th Street stop in Manhattan just before 11 a.m. When a ferry pulled up, only 50 people, about half of the waiting line, were able to board, he said. The councilman and his family waited 30 minutes more for another boat. By that time the line had grown by an additional 40 people, who then had to wait for the boat after his.

“This is supposed to be a form of public transportation,” Mr. Kallos, a Democrat, said in an interview Monday. “We can’t live in a reality where you have to wait for a ferry and then not have enough room on that ferry. Or wait an hour or half an hour for the next ferry. That’s just not acceptable.”

“We have 20 months until this goes into effect,” said Alex Matthiessen, who began forming coalitions around congestion pricing in 2010 after Mayor Bloomberg’s plan failed to muster enough support two years earlier. “There’s all kinds of possibilities for mischief-making, for rollbacks, for backlash.”

The discussion around congestion pricing has evolved from earlier goals of transforming our streets and fighting climate change to today’s single-minded focus on raising money for a failing transit system. There is an understandable urge among some transit advocates to focus only on the plan at hand as a practical way to stop the bleeding at the MTA. Certainly the Manhattan-centric plan is an improvement to the status quo, but it hasn’t changed much in more than a decade, and with minor variations it has been defeated repeatedly.

Now may be the time to try something different. With a fresh look at the evidence we can devise a plan that would more dramatically reduce congestion. Such a plan would:

Toll all entry points to New York City for all vehicles. All 4.4 million drivers — not just 717,000 — would pay a price to enter and drive around on New York City streets, likely getting hundreds of thousands if not over a million vehicles off the city’s crowded streets.

New developmentmust fundpublic infrastructure. Projects that would bring hundreds or thousands of new residents to a neighborhood should be required to set aside funds at the outset so the transit system can add capacity in time for the project’s completion.

Expand and improve existing transit infrastructure throughout New York City as well as counties on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley to make it easier for commuters to choose public transportation.

High-speed automated tolling. Institute a universal system using now-ubiquitous license plate readers for tolls at all entry points to New York City.

Dynamic pricing could take advantage of electronic tolling to charge vehicles more during rush hours in the mornings and afternoons, while reducing or eliminating charges in the evening to allow residents to come home and to encourage deliveries overnight.

Real accountability is necessary to end the tug-of-war and blame games between state and city officials. New York City Speaker Corey Johnson’s idea for municipal control is a welcome answer here.

A lock box would be created by securing capital against new revenue, as suggested by former Lieutenant Gov. Dick Ravitch. We should borrow to build a transit infrastructure today that is ready for tomorrow when millions of commuters would transition from vehicles to a new and improved public transit system.

The time is now for New York to finally implement congestion pricing. We should take an honest look at our traffic and address the whole problem by expanding the congestion zone to all of New York City. The revenues from such a plan could build a true 21st-century public transit system, so that everyone can actually have a decent commute to and from working in the big city.

The buses are also a priority for New York City Transit President Andy Byford. His transit overhaul plan released last year called for redesigning the city's bus route network and rolling out 2,800 new buses within five years. His agency also wants to speed up boarding by using all doors.

But officials should move faster to make changes that can help commuters, said City Councilman Ben Kallos, whose Upper East Side district got a failing grade.

"What do we say to all the commuters who had a rough commute this morning, who didn't get to work on time, who lost money or may have lost their jobs because of the bus that never showed up, the bus that showed up bunched or the bus that got caught in traffic because there was no bus lane?" Kallos, a Democrat, said.

The MTA says its redesign of Staten Island's express bus network has made average bus speeds 12 percent faster, and a redesign is now underway for The Bronx. But Max Young, the agency's chief external affairs officer, acknowledged that there is still "an enormous amount of work to do on this issue" despite recent progress.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The debate around congestion pricing in New York City is often focused on bustling areas such as Midtown Manhattan and the Financial District, but neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side stand to benefit from the policy as well, safe streets advocates said during a Thursday morning rally in the neighborhood.